SECONDHAND by Anne Panning
Sibley County Seconds Thrift Store
Arlington, Minnesota
Hand-knit mittens
Spools of embroidery floss
Key brand overalls
A 1970s yellow Tupperware sugar dispenser
just like your mom used to have only hers was blue not yellow and she actually still used it after all these years even though she now mostly shopped at Wal-Mart and got cheap new dishes regularly with things like apples and checkerboards around the rims which you saw as really a move to cheer herself up from a not-exactly-easy life spent cleaning other people’s houses on her hands and knees and sitting home alone while your dad worked night shift at one factory or another or even if he was home he lay on their huge king-sized bed and watched baseball while she sat in the living room and quilted and ate caramels and watched Martha Stewart with the remote control propped on her thigh and when you came home which kept becoming less and less to your mom’s dismay she would still watch tv from the minute she got up until the minute she went to bed and your dad would still lie on his bed and watch tv in their bedroom coming out only to go to the bathroom or to grab a bag of chips but you and your mom at least talked though you did so while both of you looked at the television screen and you can still remember the sound of thread breaking between your mom’s teeth as she knotted off a stitch in the quilt square and moved the little wooden hoop to another and you wish you were talented with textiles like she is and you talk to a therapist once a week who has pointed out that even though your mom doesn’t often say she loves you and even though she rarely comes to visit you in New York where you’ve lived for the past eight years and where she now has two grandchildren well your therapist who is very tiny and thin unlike your mother points out that every time your mother sends one of the kids a quilt or makes a cross-stitch embroidery sampler for them well that is also an expression of love but you just have to learn to see it that way it just takes time
A plastic John Deere cup
which you bought for your Grandpa Pader who wasn’t a farmer but had an eighth-grade education and loved all things John Deere and who used to work in a feed mill who then graduated to owning his own general store that sold cotton anklets and underwear and Key brand overalls and Havarti cheese by the slice and whole wrinkled summer sausages that lay on the checkout counter right alongside the thin local paper in which you often appeared in your cheerleading or track uniform for having won this or that and your grandpa all these years later will say to you yep Annie I always knew you were going to make it big even though you haven’t not that big but what you think he probably means is that you made a big getaway which is true enough and unlike what any single member of your entire extended family has done and you’re not even sure this is such a good thing though it’s the only way you could play it then or now
A Farrah Fawcett cup
which you bought for your friend Dave who now runs his own dance company in Minneapolis and regularly puts his still-long hair in ponytails and wears skirts and writes songs like “Portrait of a Sissy” and launched a big Charlie’s Angels show played by all men who spun circles and kicked and held toy guns and wore wigs but you know Dave for the true blue good Midwestern boy he really is whose big burly dad has a handlebar moustache and owns a lumber company and does indeed come to Dave’s dance shows and grins bemused or at least that’s what Dave tells you all through e-mail of course so it’s hard to know
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Thrift Shop
Skaneateles, New York
A clear glass pitcher, possibly antique
which you wanted to buy but it was $5.00 and seemed like a lot for an old colorless pitcher and sometimes this sense of stinginess overtakes you and you can’t see paying so much for something so superfluous besides you have plenty of pitchers old and new and this trip is supposed to be your big solo getaway after finally weaning your second and last baby so what are you doing in this thrift store anyway when you are supposed to be relaxing in the jacuzzi that comes with your deluxe suite along with cable and white wine in the little fridge but something about the clear pitcher makes you feel empty and sad and lost and you have a hard time figuring out what the hell you’re doing here on your own how awful you have forgotten how to be alone
A pink floral The Children’s Place crinkle shirt, size 4
even though your daughter Lily is barely one you buy it anyway always thinking ahead thinking ahead thinking ahead there is nothing you want for yourself here
Ron’s Pawn Shop
Spirit Lake, Idaho
Bows and arrows
Rifles
.38 pistol
which you are surprised to discover the mayor of Spirit Lake keeps one of underneath his cowboy hat so this really is the Wild West you think at least to a flatlander like you who grew up unable to comprehend mountains and valleys even though now you run a resort right in the middle of snow-capped mountains with coyotes howling at night and Aryan Nations headquarters just around the bend you and your husband who looks to you when he walks down the street somehow out of place too groomed too tall even his jean jacket looks practiced but you are both broke and dead-ended for the time being between things you like to say which goes to show that maybe all that education between the two of you doesn’t do much good if you don’t know where you’re going or what you want or who you are yet
Fishing rods and reels
VCRs
Televisions
and you pawn yours even though they give you only ten bucks for it you regret it as the days grow long and winter wears you down with its nothingness and when the spring thaw cracks open the glacial lake with a deep haunting moan you know it’s only a matter of time before Jim the rural route postman discovers you’re both out of there and onto even more school you can’t think of any better solution to the problem of uncertainty
Ragstock
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Barrels of black clothing
Army-issue duffel bags
Camouflage pants
Vintage dresses
which you wear with sandals and ponytails and cool eyeglasses or as cool as they made them in the early 80s this the era of your enlightenment or at least your attempt at such when really you’re just a “first generation” college student your forms say which means what you don’t know but suddenly no one at home understands you or the fact that you don’t want to visit on the weekends instead you smoke pot and throw money in the Friday beer kitty where everyone chips in for a case of Pfeiffer’s which with returnable bottles is only about five bucks so you get several and
this the era of boyfriend after boyfriend one of whom you call Dragon Breath behind his back of course such halitosis and another who thinks he’s Billy Idol and another who doesn’t wear underwear and another who’s a poet/wrestler with dreadlocks and another with white teeth blonde hair small penis and a little dumb who will later go on to become a model and actor in California
despite the swimmy drugs and lack of money or sleep you’re alive and your English major keeps you sane and sensitive despite your frequent frustrated trips to the financial aid office where you wait for stalled checks and wish your parents always broke could help you at this point or at least for once
Faded Levi’s
Gas station attendant work shirts
Bowling shoes
your dad used to bowl in fact it’s one of the only things your parents ever did and you remember he had his own personal bowling ball pink marble swirl in a navy zip-up case and his own bowling shoes black and white retro with suede soles worn to shiny leather this was call for a babysitter expensive you now know but one of their only pleasures though he’d come home drunk tipping into the trailer’s fake paneled walls your mother in tears swearing at him
he got into AA and treatment and therapy while you were away but you were too busy to notice or you noticed but when phone calls came you didn’t know what to say because he wasn’t “using” anymore and you were and it seemed better just to keep that hush-hush though you grew oddly lonesome sometimes and still do for that crazy sense of danger and fear his drinking stirred up
A cardboard box and garbage bags on Castro Street
San Francisco, California
Snowman print Old Navy flannel pajama pants
A prescription from a Chinese doctor
A pink J. Crew cardigan
An orange and pink market bag
that’s woven and plastic and you’ve always been a sucker for bags so you grab it even though you were raised poor in a trailer court and should be ashamed digging through other people’s garbage you can’t help yourself and the clothes are so nice and the bag is so cute and what’s amazing is everything’s in such good shape and just your size though from various papers and garbage you guess that the woman is Asian Chinese you think and possibly into herbal remedies and besides the bags and box are just sitting out there right around the corner from your friend’s apartment who is gay and living the life in the Castro District so different from you who live a block from the Erie Canal in a sleepy little Lake Ontario town with two small children and a husband and a house but this windfall here you find too much to pass up and though your friend says eww how can you wear that stuff that’s been sitting on the street you don’t see the harm you see only the bounty of a stranger’s left-behinds a gift really meant to be and
once home you like to pretend you’re her whoever she is
Goodwill Store
Honolulu, Hawaii
Aloha dresses
Rice cookers
Flip-flops
Fans
which you once bought two of on your bike along with a lamp and some dishes for your new apartment but how to get it all home you stood outside next to a noodle shop flummoxed and then as if conjured your friend Dack pulled up in his pink VW van what you are doing he squealed and agreed to haul you and your stuff back to your apartment after he was done shopping
he bought a white tuxedo jacket with black satin lapels very Frank Sinatra and also a toaster a waffle maker and a crushed velvet hat à la Fat Albert and also two lawn chairs a straw beach mat and a gold lamé evening gown you oohed and ahhed in the back of the van as he showed all of this to you
the next thing you knew it was after midnight you decided to sleep over at his house like a teenager but kept getting woken up by the obnoxious uncaged parrot and the fat Siamese cat who spat and hissed because you were sleeping on her couch
Tiny Japanese wooden sandals
Snorkel masks & fins
1970s sunglasses
which you wore with floppy hats like a costume as the hot days of Hawaii bled into one another in a fantastic white blur you didn’t know how to feel at home in such a place you a graduate student born and raised in blizzards and to somehow find yourself plucking your own grapefruits off a tree for breakfast bewildered you and you didn’t necessarily like it you know you hated the heat you know you would often look up at the sky and think this is the same sky that your family in Minnesota is seeing which confused you made you feel so far away that you didn’t know how to respond to your mother’s phone calls at odd hours now I can just never seem to remember the time difference there she’d say when she’d call at one in the morning your time as she sipped her morning coffee
Volunteers of America Thrift Store
Brockport, New York
The 1940s metal office chair you’re sitting on
Your son Hudson’s walnut desk full of markers and scribbles
The two oak dining room chairs downstairs
A miniature baby swimming pool for Lily
Your favorite etched wine glass
Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People
An old Smith-Corona manual typewriter used as a bookend
The Japanese dessert bowls shaped like tulips
and you keep searching you go often at the ends of days or mornings or weekdays or Saturdays or Sundays digging
Zippers
Doll faces in plastic
An ancient Singer sewing machine
which you debated about for at least fifteen minutes $9.99 it said so heavy you could barely lift it out of the box but so beautiful with carved silver scrolling red & yellow flowers on black metal but you couldn’t justify how it would merely sit up in the attic with bat poop though what tempted you was the prospect of telling your mom guess what I got? you’d say she a seamstress and quilter would appreciate it know its worth but when you went back for it the next day it was gone.
Anne Panning’s creative nonfiction and short stories have appeared in the Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and Black Warrior Review. She is the author of the short story collection, The Price of Eggs (Coffeehouse Press, 1992).